Anatomy of Vučić's threats

Dictator, here, it threatens again. That's what dictators do, they threaten. He says he will use the means of state coercion if he is forced to do so. Hmm... Forced? A clarification would be needed here: what does driven mean? Who will force him to use state force and why? Well, he won't perform, I guess the police i army because those young girls (about 600 of them) are screaming under his window and because 2758 citizens - dressed in thick winter jackets, so it only looks like there are 100 thousand of them - gathered on Slavija and stopped the traffic?

Continuing the threat, the dictator notes that the constitutional order is threatened. Um... Constitutional order? A clarification would be needed here: exactly what constitutional order is the dictator referring to? To the American constitutional order? He is certainly not referring to the constitutional order of Serbia, because I guess he knows best that this order does not exist since he thoroughly trampled on it, and those 2578 citizens and the dečurlija are actually looking for the establishment of a constitutional order.

How does someone who seeks the establishment of a constitutional order destroy the constitutional order?

In addition, the dictator added, a colored revolution is underway. Um... Color revolution? Here, too, a clarification would be needed: what is the colored revolution? If the signatory of these lines did not miss something, there are no revolutionary voices. Or, perhaps, to the best student of the Faculty of Law of all time, the requirement to respect the constitution and the law seems like a revolutionary achievement?

Volya versus laws

Dictators, of course, do not provide clarifications of vague formulations from which one can read anything ("did I say it nicely"). This is why we rely on logic and elementary knowledge of history. A dictator resorts to force when he is personally threatened, that is, when the power he has usurped is threatened.

Make no mistake: there is no such thing as a legitimate dictatorship. Dictatorship legitimizes itself factually, by force, at every moment of its existence, and lasts until the police and army disobey. After all, from the perspective of a dictator - who acts solely in his own interest - state coercion serves only to protect him from his own citizens.

In countries that deserve the name, coercive apparatuses - the police and the army - protect citizens from those who do not respect civil order and from outside intrusions. But where a dictator has overthrown the state, trampled on the constitution and suspended laws, and rules with the help of a subjugated judicial system, police, army and party whips, there is only the will of the dictator as the supreme governing principle.

The will, however, cannot be a principle because it is arbitrary, because it does not rest on the rules necessary to maintain the community, and when a dictator threatens to use force, it means that he feels personally threatened. This means that he is not sure whether he controls the apparatus of coercion to the full extent, that is, whether his will will be sufficient to mobilize the police and the army.

The only way for him to find out is to try to carry out the threat, that is, to send the police and the army against the students and citizens.

Vučić at Terazije

But here an interesting plot emerges. The only effective threat is the one behind which there is a firm attitude that it, that threat, will come true. A threat must be a performative act: to be effective, it must be, at the same time, the realization of a threat.

At what point will the dictator be ready to order the police and army to pounce on the rude dechurlia and ungrateful citizens (to whom he gave everything, and they give him this back)? When he has nowhere to go?

But he has nowhere to go for a long time (because, he says, he will not run away like Bashar al-Assad). Can anyone imagine how AV calmly, like Boris Tadić or Vojislav Koštunica, walks through Terazije holding his wife's hand? In addition, how will he justify sending the police and the army to the citizens?

Dečurlija and the citizens seem extremely decent, they don't even step on the green areas of the city, and these teachers, teachers, professors, don't seem like a violent world either. Would the Minister of Police, in the end, support him unreservedly (if the Minister asks anything, that is), whatever, in the meantime, the two of them are sulking on the couch? The minister is not famous for his integrity (on the contrary) - after all, is there anyone with a backbone in the dictator's environment? (no) - but nobody, I guess, was publicly humiliated by the dictator more than him, and he knows best why he suffers.

How to abuse the police and the army?

So, will Vučić try to incite the police and the army on the citizens? When? At what point? With what excuse? With the excuse that students and citizens are destroying the constitutional order?

The dictator would have to make a little more effort so that the police and the army would go after those who demand respect for the constitutional and legal order. Somnambulistic stories spread by his propaganda about mercenaries, Ustasha, enemies of this country, colored revolutionaries (but what the hell is a "colored revolution"?), terrorists, scum, rabble - that's the technique used by the Nazis when they were preparing the pogrom of the Jews - somehow they don't hold water even with less intelligent policemen and soldiers, let alone with those who think (and abide by the law).

Therefore, the dictator will only get the answer to these dilemmas if he orders the police and the army to attack the citizens.

And it could also be that he was too late for that.

The anatomy of Vučić's threats has so far shown that, combined with ubiquitous propaganda violence and the engagement of the party paramilitary, they were empty, but sufficient to keep the citizens passive. However, it is not like that anymore.